The federal government said it has spent N16 billion on Treasury Single Account (TSA) transaction costs in two years, an average of N8 billion a year the Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF) Ahmed Idris has cried out. He said the government would no longer bear the service charge on all payments on behalf of its Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). These costs are now to be borne by the paying agencies.
Mr Ahmed Idris, the Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF), in a statement by the Director, Press, Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation (OAGF), Johnson Oise, quoted the AGF as saying:“It is time for Nigerians to pay for the services that they receive and government will take whatever is due to it without necessarily incurring cost. In the old tariff regime, the Federal Government bore the charges on all transactions to the service providers on behalf of payers.’’
Idris said a lot of sensitisation had been done to give enough room to understanding the new tariff regime and for compliance, adding that the charges were minimal and negotiable. “By negotiable, I mean by introduction of more players in the market, definitely the charges will come down from whatever they are now, but right now discussions are going on to make the charges as minimal as possible. We are liberalising the market and it has to be a level-playing field for all operators to operate and that is what will happen.’’ The AGF said the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), as the regulator which stipulates the rates of the charges, would always intervene if any service provider charged beyond the approved rate.
TSA was introduced by the federal government as a public accounting system using a single account, or a set of linked accounts by government. The objective is to ensure that all revenue receipts and payments are done through a Consolidated Revenue Account (CRA) at the CBN in order to reduce the perceived corruption in the system. The scheme which began in 2012, uses a unified structure of accounting for MDAs to ensure accountability and transparency in public fund management.
